After reading Keith DeRose’s post on hell (a guest post on Tony Jones’ BeliefNet blog), I couldn’t stop thinking about Richard Dawkins. Talking with my husband later, I realized why, and how it’s intimately related to the post I wrote recently on not being “post evangelical.”

After reading Keith’s post, I realized that I just had no clue how much healing is involved in being post-evangelical. To grow up really believing that somebody could burn in hell for all eternity because they didn’t jump through the right hoops… ouch.

So I got to be a little less sanctimonious about being a freethinker. That was an improvement. A little healthy remorse.

But then it hit me that there’s more. I got a glimpse into what it must be like for my emergent friends to see old-time Christians bible-thumping. Because when I see Richard Dawkins’ book (The God Delusion), my stomach knots up and I want to vomit, or scream. (I feel like screaming right this moment, as I write this.)

See, he’s my people. I’m way into philosophy and science, and he has written some beautiful things on those topics. He’s popular with my circle, at least the rationalist parts of it. He’s *supposed* to be a good guy.

Let me digress. When I was a little girl, I was completely freaked out by the scientistic worldview, that the universe is a cold, dark place, with no God-love holding it together. Determinism was a literal nightmare. I found the idea of hell silly, but the idea of a god-less, cold universe seemed very plausible, and I was terrified of it. I thought if that were true, I should kill myself. Life became a quest for a reason to live.

Since I know that rationalistic “post-atheists” like me are rare in these circles, I want to be especially clear: I am in tears writing this. I was truly traumatized by this “cold-universe” theory. I spent nights sobbing about it, and years battling depression. I sought after God all along, but sometimes lost hope, especially when all the “smart” people (like Penn Jillette and Richard Dawkins) seemed so sure.

So, while I can work up empathy for almost anyone, I haven’t got there yet with Richard Dawkins. He published a book intended to destroy people’s faith, get people to teach their children about the hell he thinks the universe is. I am so angry. So damned angry.

I write this partly as an apology for not getting how much it sucks to be post-evangelical. And partly, I write it because I know there have to be at least a few people who suffered this other kind of hell as a kid. And I want to say it’s ok, it’s not true, there is a loving force in the universe–a loving God–and you are safe in God’s arms.